Saudi Arabia, an ISIS That Has Made It - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/21/opinion/saudi-arabia-an-isis-that-has-made-it.html <comment><USER2> One frustrating thing that the author gets wrong is labelling Iran the "Gray Daesh."

Iran has geopolitical conflict with the West, but it's a false equivalent of Saudi Arabia. Iran is a theocracy trying to control a population that growingly wants to be secular. Women in Iran go to university at higher rates than men, can drive, hold office, and vote. Life in Iran for a women is not perfect but is heaven compared to Saudi Arabia.

Iranian sponsored militias like hezbollah are in geopolitical conflicts as Iran wants more regional influence. They want regional islam. They are not trying to establish a global Shiite islamic state.

Like most things it comes down to money and power. Saudi plays ball with America economic hegemony and Iran does not. So rather than allying with the more moderate/educated nation with huge potential to be progressive, we ally with the one that is best for big business and willing to cede military control of the region to us.

The Iranian theocracy is fucked, don't get me wrong. But we really have our priorities in a mess.

<comment><USER3> As Iranian (I am commenting from Tehran) I completely approve your point of view.I even explained in long comment in this post(you can find it in bottom).Iranian regime nightmare is liberal people( because they are the most effective opposition to current regime, all of other opposition's dismantled by regime very easily they don't even exist in society).

you know why? Because they are only threat to nature of this unbeatable regime(which have money manpower and religion).but west politicians keep ignoring this fact.Iran society is way ahead of its regime.Maybe far better than turkey in term of progressiveness And regime knows perfectly. Not Isis.not USA.not Israel.non of them is serious threat for them in long term.but a huge young population with secular believes is THE most threat for regime nature.people who use internet and spend time behind porn sites and don't give fuck about Islam is the most threat (and lose) for Iran regime.

You want change middle east . change their fucking -stupid- culture with internet, with porn.

<comment><USER4> From the perspective of a Western government, Iran's international relations are the problem.[1] The fact that Iran's society is relatively advanced does little to console the families of the 1100 American soldiers killed by Iranian proxies in Iraq; nor does it console the families of the hundreds (if not thousands) of Israeli civilians killed by (Iranian government supported) Hamas. State support for the Assad regime isn't helping the Iranian government's international reputation either.[2]

If you want to change the West's attitude towards Iran, a good first step would be to push for the release of Jason Rezaian, and the end of state support for terrorism.[3]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_state- sponsored_terro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_state- sponsored_terrorism)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_involvement_in_the_Syr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_involvement_in_the_Syrian_Civil_War)

[3] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/pb/stories-jason- rezaian/](https://www.washingtonpost.com/pb/stories-jason-rezaian/)

<comment><USER5> I think the US/Iran resentment goes back a bit further, roughly to the time that Iran took a whole pile of US hostages that were held for more than a year.

That's not the sort of thing that is easily forgotten and it is one of the cornerstones of West/Islam conflict.

After that it was mostly a downward spiral, with some recent relaxation on both sides of the line.

<comment><USER6> > I think the US/Iran resentment goes back a bit further, roughly to the time > that Iran took a whole pile of US hostages that were held for more than a > year.

But that didn't happen in a vacuum either. The U.S. engineered or facilitated the overthrow of a mostly democratic Iranian leader in 1953, and put in his place a mini-dynasty of dictators who brutally oppresssed Iranians, with U.S. support, until that day in 1979. I'm not saying the Iranians should have taken those innocent Americans hostage but they didn't pick the American embassy and take hostages in a random act of violence.

... and I'm sure the 1953 coup didn't happen in a vacuum either.

<comment><USER5> I said 'US/Iran' resentment. The 'Iran/US' resentment dates back even further, and if you trace it all to its roots you end somewhere in the 1700's or so, but then it was still (mostly) the UK and not the US.

<comment><USER6> > I said 'US/Iran' resentment

If you mean "US/Iran resentment" means "US resentment of Iran but not Iranian resentment of the US", I now understand what you intended. Unfortunately, your syntax is undocumented and not defined in the language standard. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The author has a point. Most of the 9/11 attackers were Saudis. Bin Laden was a Saudi. Saudi Arabia is a dysfunctional country propped up by oil money.

It's even more insular than it used to be. Saudis used to send their kids to the US to go to college, with Government funding. Now Saudi Arabia has enough educational institutions that they don't do that.

Years ago, I met a Saudi girl finishing Stanford who mentioned she was going to drive to New Orleans. That route meant a long drive through the boring part of the US. She said it was the only time in her life she'd be allowed to drive on a long car trip. That was decades ago, and Saudi Arabia still doesn't let women drive.

Here's a good set of articles by a Saudi expat in Britain: [http://muttawa.blogspot.com/](http://muttawa.blogspot.com/)

<comment><USER8> As someone pointed out to me earlier this week here on HN, Seymour Hersh's article on the Bin Ladin assassination, the real story of Al Qe'da is that the Saudis funded it tacitly. And as a result Saudi government is partially responsible for 9/11.

The sooner we figure out how to make petroleum irrelevant, the sooner places like Saudi lose their influence. Gas == War.

<comment><USER9> The US only imports about 15% of crud oil and related products (such as gas) from Saudi Arabia. 70% is non-OPEC, and 40% is from Canada [1]. At the same time, the US produces roughly the same amount that it imports [2]. So at this point in time, the US no longer needs the Middle East for oil.

[1] [http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_...](http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0_mbbl_m.htm)

[2] [http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MC...](http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=PET&s=MCRFPUS1&f=M)

<comment><USER8> Completely true: the US doesn't need middle eastern oil. But the politics around oil are not just about getting it. It's also about _preventing_ certain groups from getting it AND controlling access to oil to our strategic allies. Oil is the lever of all geopolitics. To understand the balance of power, the economics and politics of oil go hand in hand. It's not just about driving your car: it's about ruling the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _Daesh has a mother: the invasion of Iraq. But it also has a father: Saudi Arabia and its religious-industrial complex. Until that point is understood, battles may be won, but the war will be lost. Jihadists will be killed, only to be reborn again in future generations and raised on the same books. The attacks in Paris have exposed this contradiction again, but as happened after 9 /11, it risks being erased from our analyses and our consciences._

The best summary I have read so far.

<comment><USER11> the guy nailed it.. great read

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> [http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303...](http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user3303/imageroot/2015/01/20150123_saudi.jpg)

<comment><USER13> This make sense, both follow the same book, both are considred ultra-orthodox movement, which does give credence to the OP.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_ibn_Abd_al- Wahhab](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_ibn_Abd_al-Wahhab)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salafi_movement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salafi_movement)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Saudi Arabia is also the biggest exporter of Radical Islam

" Indian intelligence says that in India alone, from 2011 to 2013, some 25,000 Saudi clerics arrived bearing more than $250 million to build mosques and universities and hold seminars. "We are talking about thousands and thousands of activist organizations and preachers who are in the Saudi sphere of influence," said Usama Hasan, a researcher in Islamic studies.

These institutions and clerics preach the specifically Saudi version of Sunni Islam, the extreme fundamentalist strain known as Wahhabism or Salafism."

Source: [http://theweek.com/articles/570297/how-saudi-arabia- exports-...](http://theweek.com/articles/570297/how-saudi-arabia-exports- radical-islam)

<comment><USER15> With polygamy being legal, they take underage Muslim girls from cities like Hyderabad on their return journey to Middle East after "buying" them from their parents.

<comment><USER14> Unbelievable. I didn't think this was true, but you are right. There are 100s of stories of how Women in Hyderabad are being sold to Arab Sheiks. Very disturbing. Found a news item of a Gang busted too => [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0eNGDcBoGM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0eNGDcBoGM)

<comment><USER16> Seems like the scene from taken with the Sheiks buying young drug addicted women from underground auctions was not that far off from the truth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As a Saudi HNer who has spent his life between Saudi and the US, I hope I can point out a few things here. I understand the point the author is trying to make. It does, however, come off to me as unnecessarily hostile and overreaching.

\- Saudi Arabia has 18 million nationals. The vast majority of which are sunni salafis (the nomenclature preferred to "Wahhabism"). If Wahhabism was driving motivation for ISIS, then ISIS would have been at least 1000 times the size it is now. Which is clearly not the case.

\- While ISIS has similar sounding rhetoric to some hardcore Saudi hardliners, it is almost uniformly reviled and regarded by almost everbody in Saudi as an extreme perversion. And not only since they blew up a number of mosques in the country (or since releasing that video of a Saudi ISIS member executing his own cousin who lay begging for mercy in the begining of that fateful video). But their gruesomeness is as repulsive to Saudis as it is to everbody else in the world. And they are seen as one of the biggest obstacles to the ouster of Bashar Al Assad in Syria (who is responsible for a civil war that has killed more than 200,000 people, mostly Sunni).

\- The article makes little effort to distinguish between the Saudi people and the Saudi government. It demonizes the saudi populace even though it is at times the first victim of some of the unsavory consequences of the alliance between the monarchy and the "clergy" (a rather inaccurate term since there is no real hierarchy. The closest thing there is a counsel of elder scholars and those are usually selected for being unwaveringly loyal to the government). There is a subtlty to the dynamic of the populace, monarchy, and clergy that few in the west try to understand. I can expand on this later.

\- None of this is to deny the existence of an activist, xenophobic, hateful, Quran-thumping segment that is a loud ultra-minority from which Alqaeda and ISIS try to recruit (with Saudi being one of the first places they often like to target). The government have clamped down HARD on the vast majority of this segment ever since the string of terrorist bombings in Riyadh in the early 2000s.

\- Like I try to explain Saudi here, I often try to explain the US to people in Saudi. If there's anything you'd like me to clarify about Saudi, AMA.

<comment><USER18> Care to speculate on why Saudi Arabia itself isn't accepting Syrian refugees?

<comment><USER17> What I understand is that Saudi is already home to ~1 million Syrians and the government says they have granted residency visas to 500K more since 2011 -- not as refugees, but as residents. I can't say for certain if they are refusing more refugees or why. But I would guess that the political consequences for such a shift in demographics would be too complicated for the (rather rigid) system of government in Saudi to deal with. Especially with instability in the north and South of Saudi and the complications of the low price of oil. Just a guess, though.

<comment><USER19> Ihis is UNHCR report for end of 2011 [http://www.unhcr.org/516286589.html](http://www.unhcr.org/516286589.html) , I don't see the name of Saudi Arabia in list of popular refugee hosting countries, But I see Iran as one of top to refugee hosting countries, Iran is actually one of top two since many years ago, due to hosting Iraqis and Afghanis, [http://www.unhcr.org/516286589.html](http://www.unhcr.org/516286589.html) , you can see more of stats for other years too

<comment><USER20> This huffpost explains the discrepancy (and how western media organisations choose to ignore the reasons in their self-absorbed vilification and chest- thumping) : [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anhvinh-doanvo/europes- crisis-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anhvinh-doanvo/europes-crisis- refugees_b_8175924.html)

" The UNHCR counts refugees by noting only those "persons recognized as refugees under the 1951 UN Convention/1967 Protocol, the 1969 OAU Convention, in accordance with the UNHCR Statute, persons granted a complementary form of protection and those granted temporary protection." Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE are not parties to any of the UN protocols on refugees, and so through this technicality, they, along with most of their refugees, are excluded from many refugee counting mechanisms."

"With Saudi Arabia's non-signatory status, the Syrians residing in Saudi Arabia are classified as "Arab brothers and sisters in distress" instead of refugees covered by UN treaties"

"The government itself of Saudi Arabia has stated that it has, over the past five years since the start of the conflict hosted 2.5 million refugees."

<comment><USER19> Iran calls Afghani,Iraqi and Syrians brothers and sister in distress too. still UNCHR should shows how many are displaced and where moved, regardless of what hosted country is calling them. visit UNCHR, I am wondering why there is no report yet for 2014 and 2015?

<comment><USER20> Iran is a signatory to the 1951/1967 convention ([http://www.unhcr.org/protect/PROTECTION/3b73b0d63.pdf](http://www.unhcr.org/protect/PROTECTION/3b73b0d63.pdf))

Saudi arabia (along with most gulf states) is not. As a result they are not included in UNHCR statistics.

edit: Weird. The comements above seem different from what i remember. Either they were edited different from what i orginally replied to or i replied to wrong comment

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have to say, the quality of mainstream media coverage of the Middle East has gone up remarkably since 9-11. I think perhaps in the next fifty years or so we'll finally figure out how to handle the problems of the region with grace and magnanimity rather than hatred and endless warfare.

<comment><USER22> 1) stop interfering

2) goto 1

Pretty much covers it I reckon

<comment><USER23> Stop arming groups and practice diplomacy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> And when the oil runs out, just another ISIS.

<comment><USER25> This. The oil that turns the crank of industry and provides the energy that produces so much of every comfort we hold dear in the west finances the very evil that seeks to destroy it. Until we end our reliance of oil, the middle east and Islam will continue to threaten the West's existence. It's a horrible irony.

<comment><USER26> Islam is not threatening the West's existence.

<comment><USER27> No, of course not

We just have "Sharia Law" areas in the UK, honour killings in Canada, people getting shot in France and elsewhere because of drawings, etc

And if someone disagrees I'd like to hear your opinion.

<comment><USER28> We also have Christians murdering abortion doctors, setting bombs and fires at clinics, Christian Sovereign Citizens murdering police on a near monthly basis, advocating for a theocracy in America (God above Country or Establishment of a national religion), advocation of Christian Law above secular law, etc, and we manage to keep our society from becoming a theocracy.

Frankly, if a few evangelical Muslims are capable of destroying the secular foundation of your systems, those systems were weak in the first place.

<comment><USER29> Well the obvious answer here is that _all_ Abrahamic religions are suspect for breeding violence. But you can't say that in polite company for fear of the ADL, et. al.

<comment><USER28> Any ideology can breed violence. The Bolshevik Revolution by Marxists, or Mao's Cultural Revolution, are examples of non-religious ideologies that led to violence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Article rings true for me. Growing up in the Khaleej, I saw an increasing influence of the Salafi mindset around me. Maybe as a child I didn't pay attention to it, but in my teens and certainly visiting now after a decade, I see a very different, more conservative region.

As an aside, _The Mersault Investigation_ by Kamel Daoud (author of this article) is a very interesting book. I recommend it to people who have liked _The Stranger_.

</comment><comment><USER31> Significant portions of the commentary here are 'Exhibit A' for why politics should be banned from HN. See: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10602313](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10602313)

</comment><comment><USER32> Luckily IS/ISIS doesn't show any signs of becoming a functioning state. Their income is big for a "terrorist" organization, but small for a state.

And with the kind of international "attention" it's getting lately, this won't change soon.

</comment><comment><USER3> I commented this in a post 3 days ago.it is completely applicable here,I know maybe this is not right thing to do -copying my old cm- but those point I think closely related to the topic.( there will be Isis like groups until West's ally in middle East is most corrupted regime maybe in world.how do you want people to not be terrorist when Saudi Arabia is one of the closest society in planet . how do you expect people to change to secular ,atheist people -like people in Scandinavian,I don't remember where but there was measurement which stated 2/3 of Saudi Arabia people likes Isis and supports it.maybe it is not correct number.but the was is almost indisputable, there is huge support base for Isis in Saudi Arabia ,both government and people- when the government does not allow women to drive?.imagine the level of dictatorship. And the worst part is Saudi Arabia is us closest ally after Israel,what was the last time us puts hard sanction against Saudi Arabia because of their human right issue.what was last time us decrease relationship because of human right.as Iranian I only can say this to west politicians: go fuck yourself.

This was my old cm:

Am pretty angry about what is going on in world , so if you felt insulted , I am so sorry , and You should understand I don't want to insult you or any other person specifically,But I want insult Ideologies pretty badly.

As person who LIVES in heart of middle east (Iran) and I have seen shia militant from very close(I know people who works in IRGC),You are completely and pure wrong , do you know what would generate another generation of terrorist ? another invasion. I am atheist and liberal with a little being gay,I am not gay , but sometime things go wrong - and believe me these are pretty dangerous thing to be in Iran and would get me killed, without doubt - but I can realize the only thing will give terrorist another opportunity is invasion of a country in middle east. This is not your fucking war.This was not west fucking war at all. They shouldn't come here in any circumstance.You know what ? because Paris like terrorism act will happen again and again and again. West should understand they were wrong all the time. What the fuck are you doing in middle east ? You know what ? no body more than me would be glad to live in secular community with secular government, but it seems politician in west do not realize , being in middle east is equal to raising radical movement against them. YOU SHOULD UNDERSTAND , MIDDLE EAST SHOULD FIGHT FOR ITSELF, EVEN IF ISIS KILL ALL OF US, this is not your fucking war.I do not remember reading if any alien did help west during the renaissance. Society should grow.

PLEASE , do for humanity a favor , understand militarism is equal to terrorism. I was talking with one idiot yesterday , and he mentioned I do not believe France invade Iraq. Yes your are right idiot . France did not . but west did . These fucking killers in middle east , do not see countries , they see Islam against West.

Do you know who fights in Iran against mullah's ? Christians ? Are you kidding me, mujaheddin khalgh ? Those fucking traitors, no way.

Academia fights against mullah's, science fights, liberal people fighting against mullah's more effective than any other person in whole revolution history.This regime is almost unbeatable in political sense- because they have money and manpower and oil- but do you know they are seeing liberals in their nightmare. They even don't care about West invasion against Iran(some stupid person like G.W Bush may even consider that option).Because at the end they know the can manage harm West military pretty badly. Worse than maybe Vietnam war.BUT THEY CANNOT FIGHT WITH INTERNET, WITH TOR, WITH STUDENTS who USE TOR. Give them internet , provide them satellite , Facebook/twitter/YouTube/porn , Show them fucking beautiful women in Texas(with respect to women, I just want show sexual incentives), show them there is no need to kill so many people to get those woman , you can fuck like heaven in earth without killing people. And BOOOOOM this is the sound of explosion of foundation of religion.

Ruin their stupid culture , and then you are going to see middle is will revive. and turn to into secular place.

and Do you know who is supporting ISIS ? Which countries? I would suspect Saudi Arabia ( the US closest ally after Israel in middle east).Can you fucking believe it ? This is not double standard. This is fucking fraud against humanity.At the end we all know , non of the west's politician's give fucking flying shit about terrorism in middle east. If they did , They weren't this double standard'ed against corrupted (I would say most corrupted regime in whole world) regime in Saudi Arabia.What was last time you checked women condition in Saudi Arabia.And why the hell us have this much relation ship with country which behead people like candy. This is what I mean when I am saying double standard.

p.s. if you felt I insult you , I am so sorry , I was talking broadly than talking with you.I hope respectively, you understand there was something HUGE wrong with west policy in middle east.

<comment><USER33> > Academia fights against mullah's, science fights, liberal people fighting > against mullah's more effective than any other person in whole revolution > history...BUT THEY CANNOT FIGHT WITH INTERNET, WITH TOR, WITH STUDENTS who > USE TOR. Give them internet , provide them satellite , > Facebook/twitter/YouTube/porn , Show them fucking beautiful women in > Texas(with respect to women, I just want show sexual incentives), show them > there is no need to kill so many people to get those woman , you can fuck > like heaven in earth without killing people. And BOOOOOM this is the sound > of explosion of foundation of religion.

I see where you are coming from, and I am in agreement with this element of your comment. Backward, unproductive ideologies will not stand the test of time and will eventually crumble under the pressure of globalization unless they can bring tremendous force to bear against the rest of the world. I think what you say will be useful in the future, but the question is what do we do right now? Do we sit back and let ISIS attack Europe without responding? Do we let Russia deal with the issue? Are we willing to allow further areas to be destabilized?

<comment><USER34> You need to explain why this is not working in Europe before going down this path. None of the terrorists in Europe were lacking in access to internet, porn, ... Any lf that.

Yet they still kill.

In fact if most of the isis fighters do co e from the west, that goes for most of them too.

So imho this explanations doesn't work.

<comment><USER3> Because they taking revenge.my whole comment hinges on two base.first let middle East alone.( after that you are not going to encounter terrorist like those). And you can work peoples mind simultaneously to show them how stupid is their religion.

Let middle East alone.West has 50 year of stupid policy history in middle East.invasion a country, are you fucking kidding me.do you want bring democracy with that.yeap,of course invasion will generate Osama bin laden and like those.

<comment><USER34> Well if that's true then it's basically eternal war. If perceived/reported "injustices" 10000km away in a language they don't understand cause these guys to massacre civilians ... there's nothing to do but use military force against them. Merely stopping a policy won't do anything to prevent more revenge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> From: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

"Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off- topic."

Is this article really appropriate for Hacker News?

<comment><USER36> Not even a little bit. I flagged the article, as did many others.

<comment><AUTHOR> I deeply regret posting this article. Somehow I thought it was interesting and in tune with many other articles we've discussed this week but seeing what happened here, oh my... I'm really sorry, won't happen again.

<comment><USER37> FWIW, the story has fallen off the front page because (a) users flagged it and (b) moderators have downweighted it, as we typically do when a story is either a piler-on or a riler-upper or both.

<comment><USER36> Unfortunately, by the time the admins notice that there's a riler- upper - piler- onner, a lot of the damage is done. Look at how many points and comments this story has.

<comment><USER37> I'm not persuaded that it would work to control it more tightly than that. It's always been the way HN works that these things surge up and then get flagged or weighted down. There's a kind of equilibrium in there that we're loth to mess with; asking for too much would be a mistake.

This concern is perennial. I recall having the same debate many times with you and davidw years before I ever worked on HN. And I am happy to report that my view has shifted a lot closer to the two of yours since then! But is there reason to believe this has deteriorated recently? An external provocation (ISIS and Paris attacks) has certainly spiked, as happens quarterly or so, but I don't see that the HN-community-system is markedly different.

<comment><USER36> If you had a daily snapshot of the front page of HN at 3:00PM PST from 2011 to today, I think you'd see approximately the same number of political stories.

The difference is that the stories you'd see today are more focused: where before you'd see the occasional Ron Paul story, or something about Israel, or something about the banksters, today you're almost certainly going to see a police misconduct or asset forfeiture story.

What there should be is a clearer guideline. "Don't post stories about politics or religion".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Fair to add that the large amount of funding came from the USA in eagerness to overthrow Assad. [1] So, if we have the mother and father: shall we call the USA a dumb rich uncle ?

[1] [https://www.facebook.com/UniversalFreePress/videos/110928687...](https://www.facebook.com/UniversalFreePress/videos/1109286879117550/?pnref=story)

<comment><USER39> More like the Godfather, definitely not a dumb participant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> There are a few important differences. People from different countries can get a visa and visit Saudi Arabia, stay and come back safely as long as one obeys their laws. (Whether we agree with these laws is a different matter).

Muslims from different all sects can go for Hajj and are not executed for heresy because of their sectarian background.

Saudi Arabia has diplomatic relations and is a signatory to various international agreements.

One of the problems with Daesh is that they seem to be incapable of doing any of these things not because they haven't "made it", but because they are ideologically opposed to it.

</comment><comment><USER41> It's worth noting that Kamel Daoud is an ex-islamist. He was allied with the Islamist that nearly destroyed our country (Algeria) in the 90s. It's just an interesting footnote.

<comment><USER39> Yup, and now he has internalized racism toward Muslims. Psychology 101.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> ISIS is not viewed as legitimate by practically the vast majority of Muslims in the Middle East. Here is just one example of how we are speaking out against them (unfortunately, the captions contain spelling and grammar mistakes): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ2HlIYRvCM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ2HlIYRvCM)

</comment><comment><USER43> This is a friendly reminder that the United States have sponsored ISIS when they were still considered freedom fighters against Assad. The United States also happily still do business with ISIS in that they are buying extremely cheap, under market value, oil and capital goods from Iraq exported by ISIS.

Of course, none of this is officially documented, just like how not a dollar its whereabouts, of the 40 billion dollar cash the United States sent to Iraq circa 2004, is documented.

It is no secret the United States have selectively supported "freedom fighters" and militant groups when they deemed that would be more productive for the petrodollar and their Zionist friends than putting their own boots on the ground. Saddam, Osama Bin Laden, Gadaffi, ISIS and countless of others have all been supported by the United States and their removal has always been justified either because they turned their back on the United States and their allies (with Zionists being the most prominent) - or because they could be replaced by a better/cheaper/more productive puppet.

\--edit: if you are downvoting this reply, consider offering substantial content to the discussion instead of trying to cloak statements which do not strike well with your opinion or observation of geopolitics. Thanks in advance.

<comment><USER44> > This is a friendly reminder that the United States have sponsored ISIS when > they were still considered freedom fighters against Assad.

Not really. United States sponsored other opponents to Assad, which were then sufficiently marginalized as to be either annihilated or convert to Daesh, but they clearly weren't Daesh at the time.

<comment><USER39> Opponents of Assad? LOL. Have you been in a war before? Obviously not, not even close.

Here, educate yourself on how wars work: [https://www.facebook.com/UniversalFreePress/videos/110928687...](https://www.facebook.com/UniversalFreePress/videos/1109286879117550/?pnref=story)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'm sorry but i find that article rather myopic. Most of the claims in that article seem more opinion than good research. For those that are interested in getting a balanced view can get their own research on what life is actually like in Saudi Arabia by talking to a large community of expats there that would rather not return to home soil.

That said, Saudi arabia enjoys healthy support from the west and has done so right from its inception. The country is barely 100yrs old and Britain played an instrumental role in creating the country as well as shaping most of the middle east. That has striking parallels to what is going on with ISIS right now.

Here is a well researched lecture on the subject by Dr Yasir Qadhi:

[http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=659f5wuTgzY](http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=659f5wuTgzY)

You'll need to watch part 2 as well to get the full picture and if you have time might also want to watch the video on the creation of Israel which is equally damning.

And regards ISIS here's Putin's statement -- that interestingly was not covered by western media -- but is congruent with the lecture and my point above.

[http://youtu.be/t1qHORKKLls](http://youtu.be/t1qHORKKLls)

Please feel free to do your own independent, balanced research.

<comment><USER46> "more opinion than good research"?

The page says "The Opinion Pages"

MSM is full of opinion; I'm just happy when they label it opinion and not "news".

<comment><USER47> Praise be to Allah.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> [https://www.facebook.com/UniversalFreePress/videos/110928687...](https://www.facebook.com/UniversalFreePress/videos/1109286879117550/?pnref=story)

US and Saudis are both funding ISIS, and the latter cannot do it without the permission of the former.

</comment><comment><USER47> The major problem I have with this opinion piece is not the perspective, but the writer - Kamel Daoud. One of his major influences is a cross-section of experience between living in Algeria and being bifurcated with the west. His bleed out on the screen, seems more jaded than informative. At the very least he's sloppy in respecting certain parts of the Saudi national, with terms like Wahhabi which by all accounts is derogatory. Which through admission, I'm a white middle class IT professional living in the Rust Best, and the subtle nature of his cantor is a bit tasteless in my opinion. However, Saudi Arabia is by all measures secular and demands it be, because of its place in the world - it's the holder of the great sites of Islam, playing host to the yearly travel of millions of pilgrims of the Islamic faith. Regardless, it's just a bit slap-stick on journalism to be provocative from my perspective.

<comment><USER48> > Saudi Arabia is by all measures secular and demands it be

hu, secular???

It seems very plausible to me, that he is spot on with the article. Should be plastered all over the billboards and newspapers. Good to read some 'straight talk'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Have you ever noticed that All these countries that have members in ISIS Army, are the same one were fighting Iran along with SADDAM?

</comment><comment><USER49> So why doesn't US take Saudi Arabia, like it took (and then abandoned) Iraq?

</comment><comment><USER50> > rape of Iraq

That is an interesting metaphor.

So ISIS is an illegitimate child of George W Bush then.

</comment><comment><USER51> This is so on point. A prime example of the hypocrisy of western governments. Until we have leaders that truly do what they claim to believe, we deserve everything that comes upon us.

<comment><USER52> So hypocrisy justifies spraying random Frenchmen with machine guns? Think harder.

<comment><USER43> The thing is that most people condemn the "spraying random Frenchmen with machine guns", but applaud when the day after France carpet bombs Raqqa, a Syrian city with a population of over 200000 with the civilians being trapped in the oppression of ISIS.

Apparently, then the death of dozens of innocent civilians which had no choice other than getting trapped between bombs falling from the sky or ISIS militants controlling the city borders, is justified because "look what happened in Paris!".

<comment><USER16> From what I read, it seemed like the French were not given the option to carpet bomb Raqqa but instead got to fulfill a long list of kill orders on strategic targets instead of the usual method of doling them out to different allies to take care of.

<comment><USER53> Well, thanks to the extensive coverage (/s) we all know how it went down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> > "One has to live in the Muslim world to understand the immense > transformative influence of religious television channels on society"

Ahem, Fox News

</comment><comment><USER39> This feels like it could have come out of Donald Trump or Ted Cruz. The xenophobic S.O.B.s of America.

</comment><comment><USER55> Awkardly written, either by Kamel Daoud, or the translation by John Cullen from the French. I don't know which parts were literal and which were metaphor.

<comment><USER56> This is the French way of writing. See "Simulacra and Simulation" by Baudrillard for more examples of this writing style.

<comment><USER57> Baudrillard is fun every once in a while, but it's certainly not accurate to describe a controversial, notoriously abstruse poststructuralist philosopher as typical of "the French way of writing."</comment></comment></comment>


A better web font compression format: WOFF 2.0 - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/u/0/+FrancoisBeaufort/posts/A3L8MemkGQ3 <comment><AUTHOR> The Chrome team has a reference implementation for a compressor/decompressor here:

[https://code.google.com/p/font-compression- reference/](https://code.google.com/p/font-compression-reference/)</comment>


Kalzumeus Software Year in Review 2016 - <AUTHOR> http://www.kalzumeus.com/2016/12/30/kalzumeus-software-year-in-review-2016/ <comment><USER3> I owe a great deal of my own personal success to Patrick McKenzie and Thomas Ptacek, both of whom have been steadfast, consistent and generous advisors (both in public comments and in "hey can I bounce this off of you" emails).

After following Patrick's writings and stories for a number of years now, I can confidently say that his relentless transparency has been one of the greatest gifts I received in the industry. His advice may not strictly work for everyone in the literal sense, but I believe that diligently attempting to use his suggestions as a template is, itself, a highly productive exercise in programming and business.

There is one particular note I want to make about patio11's success: Patrick is a phenomenal marketer with remarkable business savvy who _happens to be a programmer._ He is _not_ primarily a programmer, which is evidenced by his recent work at Stripe and the work he is best known for on HN (essentially, writing about shipping software, not the software itself).

This is not to say he is not a good programmer - I simply can't comment on that, though I have reason to believe he is after seeing Starfighter's game. Rather, he leverages that skill set as a means to an end, not an end in itself.

I think this is a really important point to make because I see many people who try to pursue significant career success by e.g. ranking up on TopCoder, or open sourcing impressive software. While those things can lead to success, there is a vast, long tail of people who are very capable programmers with no recognition doing those things. Healthy self-promotion and _efficient_ improvement/maintenance of one's technical skills has a much higher probability of success than attempting to become Fabrice Bellard.

This is demonstrative - in my opinion, the sum of all of patio11's advice can be summarized as follows: _Don 't be a programmer, be a $SOMETHING who happens to program, and program well._

<comment><USER4> I've taken this lesson too, and I'm curious about what set of values for $SOMETHING is. In theory it is "everything", but in practice the two common values I see are "marketer" and "scientist". I really can't get excited about marketing, and it's difficult to justify going for a PhD. What are some values for $SOMETHING that others here have seen success with?

<comment><USER5> The reason "marketer" seems so common is because those who are good at marketing are inherently good self promotors. Making them far more visible than other, less common examples.

Anecdotally, supply chain and business operations are two big areas where I have success.

You don't even really need any domain knowledge to get started in those fields. I did a 6 month internship at one of the world's largest companies that has a consistently top ranked supply chain organization. They had the expense of a 10 person recruiting team (all expensive line managers and directors, not HR personnel) coming to campus for 3 days, and only gave offers to two of us. And I explicitly said during my interview I knew jack all about supply chain. Their response was that supply chain was their expertise and they had training for that if I needed it, but my general analytical skills and Excel knowledge were far more rare (in their applicants).

Turns out they were piloting a new inventory management methodology and were using Excel-based "models" to trial it manually at a dozen manufacturing plants before deciding if it was worth the 8- or 9- figure cost to have SAP make that an official model in their system. It involved running batch exports from SAP every morning, putting that into Excel, updating the figures, and sending that out to the plants. But the pilot had scaled to a high volume plant that basically maxed out Excel, and they were struggling to make it work. All I did was essentially refactor a lot of logic to do batch operations (made a few VBA scripts that connected to the Excel spreadsheet with an ODBC connection and ran a series of SQL statements instead of in-cell functions).

It's been about 5 years since then, and I still get calls every few months for contract work essentially doing the same thing (Excel got bogged down -> needs a refactor).

Part of my day job involves essentially doing the same thing, but in a more generalistic sense on business operations. Process engineering is a portable skillset across verticals. Whether it's in supply chain, sales, marketing, or operations, there's always a bottleneck that's preventing growth or efficient resource utilization. I am a piss-poor programmer. I have never once been hired or paid explicitly to program, and I don't have enough experience in any particular language to pass even a junior level programming interview. I get paid to make irritations or problems go away while causing the least amount of friction utilizing whatever constraints exist. In the course of doing so I've tweaked C# and PHP programs. I've written bash, awk, perl, VBA, Python, and NodeJS scripts. I've written a whole lot of SQL. And I've refactored an incredible number of Google Sheets and Excel workbooks. I'm not valuable because I can program; I'm valuable because I can reliably and consistently resolve whatever issue is thrown my way in a self-sufficient manner, and ramp up on whatever knowledge or tool is needed to do so incredibly quickly whether I have prior exposure or not. I'm not a consultant that provides a report that then requires additional resources to execute; I provide a working solution (or prototype) that immediately solves the issue. And in the case of a prototype, provides a stopgap solution that (crudely) solves things in the immediate term and provides an explicit, working example of the functionality that their engineering resources need to incorporate into their internal tools/processes for a long term fix.

One piece of advice that seems to serve me well: people hate change. And people also tend to hate relying on others to perform their job. The greater the change, or the more reliance on a programmer to make modest changes to a process, the more resistance and ill will you'll create. Engineers thrive for perfection, and invariably lean towards "optimal" solutions that are very invasive and supplant existing practices, rather than supplementing them. patio11 didn't create an entire Customer Management System or appointment management system that had automated appointment reminder functionality. He created a simple system that supplemented whatever process and system was already in place and added incredible benefits with minimal additional steps.

<comment><USER6> As a marketer I've started thinking that the marketing operations side actually has a ton of value to unlock for many orgs for similar reasons to what you stated.

I've taken 50MB Excel reports that took a couple hours to pull manually and reduced them to <1MB and updating automatically with data connections. That's real time savings.

Then there's the other marketing plumbing like properly setting up analytics (non trivial), conversion tracking, tag management, connecting various ad platforms, setting up automation in an ESP, etc.

It actually shocks me how many senior marketers have no idea how to do this stuff, but then again that is my marketplace advantage.

<comment><USER5>
      It actually shocks me how many senior marketers have no idea how to do this stuff, but then again that is my marketplace advantage.

A lot of senior marketers come from traditional marketing/advertising backgrounds. Where they work with marketing channels that operate on imprecise exposure figures and ballpark ROI calculations. That's what they expect, so when moving into a medium like online advertising they're perfectly fine operating in the same mental framework.

And to be fair, software engineers also tend to suck at that type of marketing plumbing. Did engineering put your conversion snippet directly within an onclick event on the submit button? Then they chose a poor implementation method with a lot of gotchas that could compromise your reporting. You could be over counting by including clicks on submissions that never go through due to validation handling. Or you could be under counting conversions because they didn't properly intercept the submit event and there's a pretty little race condition between the page submitting and your conversion code executing. Or a half dozen other potential pitfalls that need accounted for when using the onclick or onsubmit event.

Marketing Engineering is definitely a good niche to be working in.

<comment><USER6> For sure. Oddly enough, a lot of people in the traditional/advertising backgrounds do get how to use the mediums effectively, or even how to measure and optimize within them, but when it comes to the technical aspects of setting them up, they are clueless, and don't grok the minutiae.

I wouldn't call myself a Marketing Engineer by any means. I am learning how to be a better coder, but, despite the buzzwordiness of the title, I feel like Marketing Technologist is a better descriptor (for me at least).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I read these reports from Patrick with interest, but feel like he inhabits a different universe than I do.

Pinboard made $256K last year, so I operate in at least the same financial ballpark. But I do my taxes on TurboTax and have never spoken to an accountant or lawyer. My business is a sole proprietorship.

From my perspective, Patrick overcomplicates everything he undertakes with business processes and overhead. From his perspective, I'm probably a irresponsible slacker.

The upshot is that there are as many ways to run an online business as there are people, and how you do it depends as much on your personality as on objective factors. Big props to him for writing about his experience so openly, and in a way that so many people clearly find helpful.

<comment><USER8> I've had an accountant do my taxes since I was 19, and feel like I've probably saved a pretty substantial amount of money --- not by doing elaborate things to structure my income (there _are_ accounting tricks that do that, and I agree with you that exploiting them feels skeezy), but simply by ensuring I'm doing them correctly and, more importantly, on time.

Legal expenses are, as you say, a question of personality and risk tolerance. After we sold Matasano, I talked to people who'd been operating other large consultancies, and was shocked to learn that there are big firms that _just sign every contract their clients give them_. We got every contract reviewed, one by one, at significant expense. They just signed and started working. Our outcomes were comparable!

We still get everything reviewed at the new company. It costs money, but not so much that it changes the economics of the work, and I've had enough close calls over 20 years of working that it's worth it just not to worry. But reasonable people disagree about this all the time.

I do think you're wrong about the sole proprietorship thing, though. An LLC is extremely cheap (you don't even need a lawyer) and protects your personal assets from business liabilities. On the other hand, your legal strategy probably just involves fleeing the country to hide amongst the penguins along the 70th parallel.

<comment><USER9> > I've had an accountant do my taxes since I was 19, and > feel like I've > probably saved a pretty substantial amount > of money...simply by ensuring > I'm doing them correctly > and, more importantly, on time.

Can you give one specific example of something you wouldn't have been able to do correctly and on time yourself, that has at least $1000 in value to you? I've been doing my own taxes (with a six figure tax bill and often 15+ 1099s) for ten years; I'm pretty confident I've not made any meaningful errors other than typos or transposing labels on the odd stock entry, a mistake that would cost me $0 even if audited.

I--at least for a W2 worker who is a US citizen living in the US--have a uniquely bad tax situation, and I'm pretty confident that I'm not missing any major tax breaks, short of doing absurd accountancy.

<comment><USER10> The first time I used an accountant, they immediately found that I had not been taking advantage on a SEP-IRA. Which immediately saved me several thousand dollars in taxes that year. While it's not something I couldn't do myself the next year, it was admittedly something I never knew about beforehand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Speaking of salary negotiation, Patrick's article[0] on it is one of the single most valuable things I've read in my career. I can probably attribute about 25% of my salary to it.

[0] [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary- negotiation/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/)

<comment><USER12> Seriously, everyone should read this.

<comment> floodyberry- "How to ensure everyone is paid fairly" would be a "must read". This is more of a "Employers and potential employees are expected to try and screw each other out of as much money as possible - Here's how you can help perpetuate that!"

<comment><USER13> That's a pretty uncharitable view of it. I would characterize it as "Your potential employer is going to do everything it can to pay you as little as they can get away with. Here's how to maximize what they DO pay you."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Patrick is such a tease. I want to know what that two week project at Stripe that /every/ company should have is now.

<comment><USER15> Right? Half of us on HN would be dying to know.

Maybe it's some kind of code review/search tool...?

<comment><USER16> I'm going to guess one of: time tracking, holidays, expenses or internal directory with pictures and desk locations.

<comment><USER17> > internal directory with pictures and desk locations

I sometimes wonder if no one will ever say out loud how much they'd love this (at bigger companies), or if it's just me that can't easily learn 100 new names/faces/roles/projects.

<comment><USER15> I struggle with names and faces too.

I've been thinking of turning my coworkers into an Anki deck to study on the subway. That would really help me, come to think of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If anyone is interested in how much Appointment Reminder sold for: [https://feinternational.com/buy-a-website/6192-b2b-saas- prof...](https://feinternational.com/buy-a-website/6192-b2b-saas-professional- services-106k-mrr)

<comment><USER19> $120,000 in credit card debt (with interest) for a sale of $215,000 (less taxes)? Something doesn't add up.

<comment><USER20> What are you implying? He said in the post he paid off most of his creditors after closing. If the final price was $215k it certainly seems possible to pay off most of $120k with that.

<comment><USER19> > _If the final price was $215k it certainly seems possible to pay off most of > $120k with that._

Right. I was "implying" that perhaps the business wasn't as good a business as I thought.

<comment><USER21> A business like AR with $60k in profit sold for $215k seems like a pretty good deal for the seller.

On a yield basis, that seems like a great deal, but given the work involved (+ chance of the business being disrupted), I'm not sure I like that profit to price paid ratio. It certainly isn't a price I would have paid.

<comment><USER22> Why? Seems cheap? <4x? Next phase is a sales force to get customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Patrick never ceases to deliver on value to this community and many others. Even though this is a story about how he latest startup didn't go as planned (he's now full time at Stripe), he drops knowledge bombs for us all to learn:

\- knowing when to move on to something new (Appointment Reminder -> Starfighter) when he didn't have the 'fire in his belly'y any longer

\- financial planning using a simple spreadsheet: the retirement fund!

\- when to borrow money and how to calculate risk

\- when to join a company (rather than start something new)

\- the value of personal leverage (personal and professional development)

\- when and how to sell your startup

\- the trials of shipping (six weeks became three years)

\- setting goals for the future

\- the value of family

I've added Patrick's year in review to a few other bootstrappers and solopreneurs that I have felt are helpful, instructive or inspiring:

[http://startupclarity.com/a/bootstrappers-2016-year- review/](http://startupclarity.com/a/bootstrappers-2016-year-review/)

<comment><USER24> \- Appointment reminder: how to ignore a business for four years, while not improving it and giving you stress

\- financial planning using a spreadsheet, then moving to more expensive lifestyle, getting in debt and having the retirement fund turn negative when he has a wife and child and is closing down his companies. Something we can all learn from?

\- when to borrow money and how to calculate risk: Except he says not to trust his calculation of risk when he encourages the reader to play poker against him if possible because he's so bad at risk estimation.

\- when and how to sell your startup: again no, he says it put him in a bad position to be wanting to sell quickly, and he glosses over 'how' with "I know how because I've done it before". The only good read there is "don't wait until it is declining before selling, like Bingo Card Creator was".

\- the trials of shipping (six weeks became three years): the trials of promising and pre-selling a thing, then changing your mind and doing a startup instead, and trying to turn that into a positive. (Aside: Three years? I wonder how long before there's a reasonable chance that some of the purchasers died before the release?)

\- setting goals for the future: where he keeps saying he didn't meet his goals, or they have changed?

\- the value of family: "I had not felt as effective as a husband / father recently as I wanted to be" \- the value of family is lower than a side- business he was bored of and wants to sell? Lower than a "huge amount of personal fulfillment" that he got instead during that time? Lower than the guilt of refunding customers over his video series? If you were a potential customer and he said "I choose to spend more time with my family, I can't do this work justice, sorry, here's a refund", wouldn't you be fine with it?

I don't dislike him at all, I do respect him, and I like the transparent views into his life and businesses and plans and thoughts, but I'm not seeing the same things you are at all. If anything these are more cautionary tales along the lines of "you can sometimes get what you want with hard work, but it comes with a price".

<comment><USER25> > Aside: Three years? I wonder how long before there's a reasonable chance > that some of the purchasers died before the release?

Assuming all his customers are roughly 20-40 years old, the annual mortality rate is ~0.1% IIRC on average (mortality rates, because of the exponentiality of the Gompertz curve, only begin substantially increasing post-40 years, up to the ~90s with annual mortality rates like 10-50%). So then the 3-year mortality rate would be 1-(1-0.001)^3=0.002997001 or ~0.3%. So roughly you would need ~334 customers to expect 1 death over 4 years (100/0.3, since 333.3333333 * 0.002997001 ~> 0.9990003332), with the full binomial distribution covering 2/3/4/5/6 deaths as well (but not much higher with any meaningful probability). I forget where I read it, but I feel like I remember that at least 1000 people pre-ordered the course, in which case the mean number of deaths becomes more like 3 with up to 9 deaths, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> From the article:

"Doing [meat-and-potatoes work on marketing and sales that the business needed] was a real joy back when I was running Bingo Card Creator, but repeating it felt a lot like repeating high school."

Oh boy, that's exactly how I feel when I'm in the mood to make a new product. Patrick nailed it.

</comment><comment><USER27> Reading these is always interesting to me. Looking at these sorts of sites and the amount of articles and buzz they gather on Hacker News and other sites, I always assume they must be doing high six-figures in income. Yet the ones that are transparent are generally in the $300k a year or less revenue range.

I've always considered my side projects and businesses failures, but judging by these numbers I've been more successful than I realized. So I feel good about that, but I think I really need to re-evaluate my goals and how I pursue them. Because I've been extremely negative about what are apparently successes.

Perhaps I also need to be more open to hiring a broker next time I sell a project.

</comment><comment><USER28> It is hard for me to reconcile:

1) "Tokyo is a wonderful city and I love it a lot – enough to not regret the rent"

2) "the balance in my Excel file went progressively negative. This was expected, but caused me a bit of stress."

Ogaki is a city where Patrick successfully launched his first startup - <USER2> Card Creator.

Patrick met his wife in Ogaki.

Then McKenzie family moved to Tokyo, which "helped" Patrick:

\- to fail at his another startup - Starfighter and converted him from entrepreneur to an employee;

\- "not felt as effective as a husband / father";

\- to accumulate "health debt".

What is so "wonderful" about Tokyo and what is there "to love"?

<comment><USER29> The fact that you're wondering why Tokyo is so wonderful compared to Ogaki makes me think you've never been to Ogaki… (or Tokyo, for that matter).

<comment><USER30> But Patrick previously wrote about how he loved Ogaki, and was in Japan because Ogaki was there.

So it might well have made a mistake inflating lifestyle while cutting consulting AND before any of the businesses were "done".

I have the good fortune of being in a low cost of living city that's also a real, wonderful city: Montreal. Excellent place to start and scale a solopreneur business.

Currently scaling up my business processes (accounting, support, etc.) which increases business costs. I'd be very wary of moving anywhere more expensive until I've increased revenue to match. (This _shouldn 't_ be a problem – outsourcing the backend processes will let me move on several revenue generating projects I've been deferring while dealing with a backlog of administrative stuff)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'd love a series of interviews with the people you've dealt with over the years at your Ogaki bank and their perceptions and misconceptions about your account and the transactions that go in and out of it.

</comment><comment><USER32> At least here in Brazil, credit card debt has a fame for having the highest interest rates of all possible forms of debt, by a wide margin.

If you don't mind saying, did you ever considered other forms of debt, e.g. applying for a loan at the bank? If yes, what tanked it?

<comment><USER33> Yep! There used to be a product called a "signature loan" in the US which was an unsecured debt without a piece of plastic attached to it, at a rate materially lower than credit cards. These are very difficult to get these days; I was rejected three times, generally on a "You're asking for an amount of money that we'd find difficult to profitably underwrite and your business wouldn't qualify for it anyway; have a nice day; consolation prize we'd LOVE to give you a credit card" basis.

This is complicated by my business being international in character, where banks in two countries both think that perhaps a bank in the other would be more appropriate.

<comment><USER34> Why does your US bank need to know that you are in Japan?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I'm a bit surprised that he was running Appointment Reminder as a sole proprietorship. My business ventures have mostly sucked, but I've always found the separation of personal and business concerns afforded by proper incorporation to be invaluable, and not expensive at all in the big picture. (This was in Finland; I imagine Japan could be very different.)

On the other hand, I guess that makes AR a fine example of a company that would have benefited from Stripe Atlas if it had existed back then? :)

<comment><USER34> You are asking about the difference between C-Corp and LLC in the US. Really, your options are:

(a) LLC

(b) S-Corp

(c) C-Corp

The rules, AFAIK but IANAL:

\- Sole proprietorship (single person) can file taxes for an entity with TIN as LLC, S-Corp, or C-Corp

\- S-Corp can elect to file as a C-Corp at any time

\- C-Corp can issue multiple classes of shares; S-Corp cannot

\- Easy to convert from an S-Corp to a C-Corp

\- Difficult to convert from a C-Corp to an S-Corp

\- LLC has lowest setup cost

\- C-Corp requires you to pay double taxes on some income.

\- LLC and S-Corp taxation effectively identical

In my opinion it makes sense to incorporate an LLC, then decide between filing taxes as LLC or S-Corp at the end of the first tax year. If at any time you want to raise investment, file the requisite paperwork to convert the S-Corp into a C-Corp.

<comment><USER8> Theoretically the big difference between an S-Corp and an LLC is that an owner/member/principal of an LLC can't simultaneously be an "employee", and so must be paid by profit sharing distributions rather than W2, which can be inconvenient.

But as you point out, most LLCs can file taxes as S-Corps, which gets rid of the major difference.

Fun fact: LLCs can also have multiple share classes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> @patio11, there's a broken link to your post about salary negotiation. It's currently relative and needs a leading slash.

        <a href="2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/">previous writing on the subject</a>

<comment><USER33> Fixed, thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> (I realize this is rather tactless, but I ask in the interest of fairly weighing the risk/rewards of startups/consulting vs. big tech)

Is it fair to read this to mean that patio11's net worth is < 250 k$? (Based on the fact his liquid assets were negative prior to the sale of AR, and said sale netted less than the price of a house in Tokyo, median price: ~250 kUSD.).

<comment><USER38> I would be _very_ surprised if the median price of a house in Tokyo is ~$250k USD. I would ballpark it more to the $500-750k USD range.

My impression was that he had liquid assets and took on debt in order to avoid potential cashflow issues should he deplete his liquid assets.

I would hazard a guess that the value in the range of (new house, new house in Tokyo) refers to (sale of AR - $120k in debt) rather than his total net worth after the sale.

<comment><USER39> Prepare to be surprised :)

[http://resources.realestate.co.jp/buy/what-is-the-average- pr...](http://resources.realestate.co.jp/buy/what-is-the-average-price-of-a- house-or-condo-in-tokyo/)

We have a mental model from the 80s. Decades of recessionary prices catches up.

<comment><USER40> ... and don't forget a shrinking population. Accommodation in Japan is surprisingly inexpensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Why were you unable to keep StockFighter running?

<comment><USER8> I've written this before on HN, so will re-share it to buy more time before completing a big write-up on Starfighter:

All three of us are software developers. We like developers. We spend a lot of time talking to developers, in particular about their careers.

We had no trouble finding clients, but a lot of trouble convincing clients to take the CTF model seriously; virtually all of them wanted us to function like a traditional recruiter, offering 10 candidate profiles for every open req. That's a job that is 90% saying "no" to people.

It was dispiriting watching developers we knew to be strong get rejected for positions because they didn't have the right resume, or didn't solve some pen- and-paper programming puzzle quickly enough. It was a drag for all of us. It made us unhappy.

Life is too short.

<comment><USER42> Why didn't you listen to your customers and do just that?

I mean, change some puzzles/tests or simply recommend someone to the job if you knew he had the skills?

Wasn't this what you were solving? Matching positions to great devs.

<comment><USER8> No, that's not what we were solving. If we wanted to be conventional dial-for- dollars recruiters, we would have done that.

I understand and appreciate the mentality that your comment comes from. But the premise of our startup wasn't Steve Blank-style customer development, where we started with a vague idea of the space we wanted to be in and then worked with customer prospects to figure out exactly what product we would end up building.

Rather: the company we started was an experiment, a very opinionated one, to see if we could port a hiring model that had worked extremely well for us at one company to a larger set of companies.

I think there's a way to make that model work, but I've become convinced that "contingency recruiter" isn't the way to deliver it.

<comment><USER43> Innovation in the recruiting space is a really hard task. Most recruiters would rather throw money at yet-another-job-board-and-funnel-source than try something unique which requires putting in extra time and effort.

The last "innovation" I've witnessed in the space was the Hired model, and everyone is trying different versions of that now. It's a hurtful model that abuses the inefficiencies and lack-of-transparency in the two sided market. (For anyone wondering what I mean: When you sign up on Hired they ask you what your preferred salary range is, then, as of last time I checked, they show _that exact value_ to the companies looking through prospective candidates. So guess what the first offer you get is? Not what a "fair" market rate is, but exactly what you typed into the sign-up form.)

I do a lot of talking to recruiters as part of helping them use our Stack Overflow Talent product, and honestly it feels like taking crazy pills half the time. Having to answer "why?" to "You need to at very least explain what your company actually does, or maybe the tech stack you use" makes me feel insane.

I loved Starfighter, but thinking back what I liked most about it was the content you and Erin and Patrick wrote about it. Your point about "life is too short" is very very poignant.

I guess the whole point of this comment is for me to say I completely respect that decision, you all did the right thing. Trying to convince people who would rather just throw more money at a wall than try something unique to use your unique product is an awful feeling.

I'm very glad to hear your new project is easier to make money off :)

<comment><USER44> The last innovation I witnessed was Hacker Rank.

I'd better do a stupid coding test online that have to schedule a phone call during working hours with a guy who just want to get away from the phone call and could barely present his company and what he's recruiting for.

<comment><USER45> My view is that Hacker Rank just perpetuates the "textbook academia" and "trivia question" model of interviewing, except it automates out part of that step. If that's innovative, my bar is too high, I guess.

<comment><USER44> There is a wide range of options on HackerRank.

Standard interviews: multiple choice trivia, red black tree programming puzzles.

Innovative interviews: Custom code exercises with custom unit tests written by the company, ssh exercises where a server is created automatically per candidate and he has to connect to it and configure/fix/change some stuff.

After many interviews (both given and received). I have definitely settled that:

1) I'd rather write a stupid program on HackerRank than deal with an annoyingly scheduled phone interview (where I might be expected to spell that code over the phone WTF). Automation is nicer than the average interviewer. A proper code editor for coding is better than the average shared editor.

2) No matter what we try to do: 20% of candidates won't show up + 20% won't be able to code a program to print numbers from 1 to 10. There's nothing we can do about that (the sad state of interviews is probably all because of that).

3) For the first initial screening, very simple exercises are all that's needed (see 2). Hacker Rank is perfectly appropriate for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> patio11, why does the ToS page on Appointment Reminder still list your name as the one the agreement is with?

[https://new.appointmentreminder.org/terms-of- service/](https://new.appointmentreminder.org/terms-of-service/)

</comment><comment><USER47> Great write up. Does anybody have more information on the attack near the end "...defrauded by Lithuanian hacker gang which figured out how to use our application to proxy a telephone call through Twilio's phone number verification feature to a phone sex line in the Caribbean..."

<comment><USER33> This is fixed now, but for historical context:

Twilio has a feature to allow you to make calls which appear to come from a non-Twilio phone number. To do this, you have to make an API request (see here: [https://www.twilio.com/docs/api/rest/outgoing-caller- ids);](https://www.twilio.com/docs/api/rest/outgoing-caller-ids\);) Twilio then responds to your application with a code that the user needs to enter, you tell that code to the user (via e.g. displaying it to their web browser), and Twilio calls the user to ask for the code. If they key in the correct code on their phone, their number is verified for your account, and you can now use it as the caller ID for future calls from your application.

Because this causes an actual real-world phone call but doesn't look like a phone call to either Twilio or Appointment Reminder, it (at the time of the attack) bypassed some protections like, to name one example, AR's anti-abuse rate limiting logic.

The bad guys "attempted to verify" the phone sex lines in the Caribbean, in much the same way as a legitimate AR customer would attempt to verify their office phone number so that appointment reminders would appear to originate from their office (and they'd get callbacks) as opposed to originating from our 1-800 number.

Some of our customers are at larger institutions, which require you to put in an extension prior to reaching the customer. Think "hospitals." The bad guys put in an extension with over 100k digits to keep their phone calls from timing out. (Dial a 5, wait a second, dial a 5, wait a second...)

The economic incentive here is "If someone calls a premium-rate number that you control, you get paid money." The economic damage is "If someone calls a premium-rate number, that someone pays to do so", so all the money the bad guys made came from either Twilio or I.

<comment><USER22> Seems like pure fraud and there should be contracts to prevent it...

<comment><USER48> Contract...?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Maybe the time and effort demands of both wouldn't have allowed it but given how Patrick's personal debt grew, it seems it would have helped to do at least a little bit of consulting while he was working on Appointment Reminder.

Doing freelance / consulting work on the side while bootstrapping your product to profitability seems increasingly common now. Though this is definitely more sustainable in locales with lower costs of living while you also don't have to provide for a whole family.

<comment><USER50> I am doing some consulting while working on a company and man does it add some stress. Not that having zero money coming in would be stressfree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> No offense, but how do you get $120,000 into credit card debt with the claimed $30,000 per week consulting income.

<comment><USER52> He explained it in the article, though it was easy to miss. If you need a large amount of cash for something, and a lot of smaller figures coming in, you pay for everything with revolving debt and let your receivables stack up in a bank account. It's one way to save up money for a down payment on real estate, maybe the only way if your lifestyle is close to your income.

<comment><USER53> I can't imagine anyone accepting a downpayment when you have a downpayment's worth of revolving debt.

<comment><USER54> That's why Debt-to-Income ratio is a thing. If you're someone who's typically adverse to debt but willing to make an exception in the case of real estate, and you're living close to your means (while renting), then it can seem to make sense to get your necessary down payment (plus closing costs etc.) through revolving debt. As long as your DTI remains below the cutoff, lenders are happy to let you do it.

<comment><USER22> Yep, quite common. Cheaper than a cash advance too... however it's changing now with 3% down...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Why host Jekyll on AWS Lightsail and not S3?

It's simpler, faster, and cheaper.

Plus you can use Cloudfront and use AWS Certificate Manager for SSL.

<comment><USER56> I doubt it is cheaper if you already need the VPS for a seperate rails application.</comment></comment>


UDP flood DDoS attacks against XT nodes - <AUTHOR> It would seem that the conflict has taken a nasty turn, and some of the more extreme Core supporters have started just straight out DDoS attacking XT nodes. Not the silly bloom filter CPU exhaustion thing, but actual UDP flood attacks. Looking at a recent drop-off at XTNodes.com[1] , it seems that this has started during the last 24 hours, and one of my nodes was hit three times in that period, on a dedicated IP that only runs a Bitcoin node and nothing else. (Not that they accomplished anything outside of saturating it for ten minutes or so.)<p>Is this really how some people think they are going to "resolve" the situation? If this continues, I can easily see people starting to declare open season on non-XT nodes, and then we have a war going that no one wants. <comment><USER2> > and then we have a war going that no one wants...

The "war" was already started, now is just escalating...

This is really sad... Not good for bitcoin at all. If someone wanted to destroy bitcoin this is exactly what he would've done.

 _Divide et Impera_

</comment><comment><USER3> Wait a minute, this explains what happened to my VPS hosted at DigitalOcean. I have been running a XT node on it ever since Day 1 and today I got this email from DigitalOcean:

      Hi there,
      Our system has automatically detected an inbound DDoS against your droplet named core with the following IP Address: <IP>
      As a precautionary measure, we have temporarily disabled network traffic to your droplet to protect our network and other customers. Once the attack subsides, networking will be automatically reestablished to your droplet. The networking restriction is in place for three hours and then removed.
      Please note that we take this measure only as a last resort when other filtering, routing, and network configuration changes have not been effective in routing around the DDoS attack.

I responded asking for more specific information, and they said:

      Hi there,
      It looks like it was 2.1gbps DoS attack at about 200k PPS which would really make me think this was a straight-up SYN flood.
      I don't really have more detailed information than that, sadly.
      It looks like the blackhole will expire 3 hours after it was
      put in place.
      If you'd like a different IP, the simplest way would be to power off the droplet, take a snapshot, and bring the snapshot back up as a new droplet. After that's done, you can destroy the old droplet and you should be good to go from there.

Now it all makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER4> > and then we have a war going that no one wants

maybe some security improvements can be had from such a war?

</comment><comment><USER5> So the part where everyone else has _already been_ DDOS'd for the last two or three months; the part where many people are being personally and viciously attacked, and the part where it's actually quite possible that someone who has nothing to do with "Core" or even Bitcoin at all is behind these attacks, I suppose technically feeds into this line of reasoning.

</comment><comment><USER6> Maybe we shouldn't so easily ascribe it to "Core supporters". It could be anyone trolling or pursuing a more complex agenda.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, the text should have been in quotes. As r/bitcoin remains censored I thought perhaps you hackers would like to learn of the twist and turn that some people have chosen to take in regards to bitcoin.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think XT is great because is fundamentally allows something that was sorely needed - a way for the miners to votes.

There is no sense in trying to convince anyone to act as you want in currencies. You have to incentivize them. And if there are attacks they need to be looked at as a problem to solve.

A lot of people hundreds of years ago probably yelled 'hey don't shave the edges off gold and silver coins!!!'. The solution however, was to build ridges into the edges of coins so that shaving them off would work in practicality.

This is a battle of code and incentives, never forget that.

</comment><comment><USER8> You asked for a currency without central controlling authority. You have a currency without central controlling authority.</comment>


The TechCrunch party (Y Combinator startups were there in full force) - <AUTHOR> http://mattmaroon.com/?p=255 The TechCrunch party was fun. I had taken out a stack of what I thought was at least 1 billion business cards, plus another 10 or so in my wallet, and managed to give them all away and get a few dozen in return. I plan on following up on pretty much all of them. <comment><USER2> I was pretty disappointed with the kinds of people I met at TechCrunch7. I have no desire to attend any other TC events. I know there are some interesting people but the ratio is as bad as most nightclubs. It should have been called SuitFest9.

<comment><USER3> suits suck

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> OMG vicarious cool-Internet-people stuff! girls!!</comment>


Pence: "America Will Return to the Moon–and Go Beyond" - <AUTHOR> https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/10/05/vice-president-mike-pence-america-will-return-moon%E2%80%94and-go-beyond <comment><USER2> Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it. Every president since Bush said something to this effect. My eyebrows will raise when NASAs budget does.

<comment><USER3> NASA wants to spend over $2B per launch on a super heavy lift system called the SLS, that can only lift about twice as much as a Falcon Heavy that costs around $120M a launch.

Maybe it's not NASA's budget, but how it's spent?

<comment><USER4> I don't have a good idea about how this scales. What would something with twice the lift of the Falcon Heavy cost?

<comment><USER5> It costs 2 Falcon Heavy launches plus some work on on-orbit assembly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > It means establishing a renewed American presence on the moon... > And from > the foundation of the moon...

This is potentially bad news for SLS/Orion. They have no ability to land on the Moon. SLS doesn't do retro-propulsion and Orion can only land on Earth's ocean using heat shields and parachutes.

That's why NASA has pushed for asteroid missions and building a space station around the Moon. Those are things that SLS can do.

Of course if the intention is to land on the moon this is very good news for SpaceX and Blue Origin, both of whom have working retro-propulsion landings under their belt. Arguably, Blue Origin is in an ever better position than SpaceX since their New Shepard is about the right size for a moon lander. SpaceX would have to develop one.

(Dragon 2 was originally supposed to do retro-propulsion landing, but NASA nixed the idea of landing legs that extended from a heat shield, so the idea was dropped. They would either have to develop a lander version of Dragon 2, or wait until the BFS is available)

<comment><USER7> New Shepard far too big, with far too much delta V for a moon lander. It's design parameters are all wrong. Also SpaceX has a perfectly suitable propulsion system in the SuperDracos.

The truth is none of the existing or currently planned systems, other than BFR, would make any sense as lunar landers. They're just not designed for it. Dragon and Orion are Apollo Command Module replacements, not LEM replacements. For lunar landings and excursions we'd need a new vehicle along the lines of the LEM. Lightweight, vacuum only, reusable and refuelable with an 'infinitely' restartable engine. SLS would be perfectly capable of launching such a vehicle, in fact that's exactly the sort of thing it's designed for.

<comment><USER8> Why not just use the Saturn V designs? Are they that bad?

<comment><USER9> As magnificent as the Apollo program was, and the Saturn V in particular, it was an incredibly expensive and complex launch system, unsustainably so.

Additionally, even if you did want to recreate a Saturn V, the designs themselves aren't going to get you very far. Most of the tooling has been lost likely along with much of the institutional know how, especially on the technician side of things. I'd be very surprised if you could recreate a functioning Saturn V for a lower cost than designing an entirely new launch system.

<comment><USER10> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocketdyne_F-1#F-1B_booster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocketdyne_F-1#F-1B_booster)

> As part of the Space Launch System (SLS) program, NASA had been running the > Advanced Booster Competition, which was scheduled to end with the selection > of a winning booster configuration in 2015. In 2012, Pratt & Whitney > Rocketdyne (PWR) proposed using a derivative of the F-1 engine in the > competition as a liquid rocket booster ... The F-1B engine has a design goal > to be at least as powerful as the un-flight-tested F-1A, while also being > more cost effective.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_C-3#Pyrios](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_C-3#Pyrios)

> Developed during the later stages of the Apollo program, the F-1A was test > fired, but never flew. Several were crated and stored by Rocketdyne (later > Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne). The company has also maintained an F-1/F-1A > knowledge retention program for its engineers for the entire period the > engine has been mothballed.

Also, [https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/new-f-1b-rocket- engi...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/new-f-1b-rocket-engine- upgrades-apollo-era-deisgn-with-1-8m-lbs-of-thrust/) .

<comment><USER5> And this engine lost the SLS competition to the SSME+solids. So yes, it's an interesting point that the Saturn V engine might still be buildable, but it's not cost effective today, and it's not the Saturn V rocket.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> While this came out today, Pence also made similar statements in the summer.

[https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/vice-president-pence- visi...](https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/vice-president-pence-visits-nasa- s-multi-user-spaceport-kennedy-space-center)

Nonetheless, I think him repeating the claims a second time signals more commitment.

<comment><USER11> Slight issue:

Far more than past administrations, a huge number of things that come out of Pence's mouth are straight-up lies.

He and the rest of the administration have demonstrated they will lie with abandon to serve their own ends. We've long passed the point where we should take anything at face value this administration (and this GOP congress as well) says.

Mike Pence has a growing credibility problem: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- fix/wp/2017/05/18/vi...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- fix/wp/2017/05/18/vice-president-pence-has-a-growing-credibility-problem/)

It's not just the Russia scandal, Pence lies about health care too: [http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/its-not-just-the- rus...](http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/its-not-just-the-russia- scandal-pence-lies-about-health-care-too)

How can Mike Pence get away with outrageous lies about the health care bill? [https://www.salon.com/2017/07/17/how-can-mike-pence-get- away...](https://www.salon.com/2017/07/17/how-can-mike-pence-get-away-with- outrageous-lies-about-the-health-care-bill/)

All False statements by Mike Pence [http://www.politifact.com/personalities/mike- pence/statement...](http://www.politifact.com/personalities/mike- pence/statements/byruling/false/)

<comment><USER12> Also note that all of your sources are quite biased. This content all seems to be written by people who describe themselves as opposition to the administration and Pence. Salon of all of them is especially unreliable.

<comment><USER10> Which news sources do you consider to be sufficiently unbiased that you wouldn't need to make this caution?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Para 1: revives NSC. A good thing, I think.

Para 2: China etc. threatening our military dominance... Uh oh, hope this isn't going to a bad place.

Para 3: "We will refocus America's space program toward human exploration and discovery."

Yes, robots are more effective, but this is good, exciting, inspirational stuff. If it happens. And at least he didn't say "We will refocus our efforts towards military control of near-Earth orbit."

<comment><USER14> > "We will refocus our efforts towards military control of near-Earth orbit."

The US Space Corps is in the budget for 2018.

<comment> 52-6F-62 Where can I see this? Do they seriously want to slip the 'star wars' back in?

edit: Thanks for the Wikipedia link. Those slippery weasels! That's the wrong direction.

Apparently Russia's was reformed in 2015. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Space_Forces](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Space_Forces)

You've got to be kidding me.

edit again: Apparently this includes the US Space Command

>"HR2810 FY18 could re-establish the United States Space Command as a subordinate unified command under the United States Strategic Command not later than January 1, 2019. This bill also includes the creation of the United States Space Corps."

<comment><USER15> Yes, but:

> This proposal is opposed by the Department of Defense, U.S. Air Force, Air > Force Space Command, and military leaders such as Secretary of Defense James > Mattis, Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson, Vice Chairman of the > Joint Chiefs of Staff General Paul Selva, Chief of Staff of the Air Force > General David L. Goldfein, and the current commander of Air Force Space > Command General John W. Raymond

Also, from a joint perspective it makes no sense to bring this to the level of of Joint Chief. This would however be a perfect thing to talk about amongst the Chiefs as it would involve resources and personnel from across the services. I imagine that kind of thing is already happening, however.

<comment> 52-6F-62 Thanks, I missed that. That is somewhat reassuring. My knowledge of this in the present is limited, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Quoting Charlie Stross, teller of lies for money and HN user, from [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2017/09/bread- an...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2017/09/bread-and-circuses- circumlunar.html) :

> I don't often make exact predictions about the future; that's not an SF > writer's job, and it's really easy to get egg on your face. Howver, here's a > prediction:

> If Donald Trump is still president, US astronauts will return to circumlunar > space around July 16th, 2019 ...

> I'm making this a prediction, however, because the POTUS factor.

> July 2019 lies within the term in office of Donald Trump (or Mike Pence, > depending whether impeachment/removal has happened first then). Trump is > nothing if not an egomaniac, and offering him the opportunity to make a > historic phone call to lunar orbit in front of the TV cameras is a > guaranteed ego-stroke. Trump is of an age to have young-adult memories of > Apollo and I can't see the idea not appealing to him if he can take credit > for it.

</comment><comment><USER16> > Under President Trump, America will lead in space again.

We need to get Trump to lead the way to the moon personally. I heard Kim Jong Un said he doesn't have what it takes.

<comment><USER17> Why stop him at the moon? I heard the Oort cloud has great golf courses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> No-one in their right mind would put paragraphs two and three next to one another. The literal interpretation is "Our enemies are working to defeat us, but we're going to completely ignore that".

In practice, I suspect that a policy around 2 is much more likely, but it seems unlikely the money for that will be showing up in NASA's budgets.

This is proper Kremlinology stuff. What does it really mean? Could be anything or nothing. Only those inside the loop know for sure. And that's subject to change.

</comment><comment><USER19> Sending a lunar rover to the Tranquility landing site for the 50th anniversary of the manned moon landing would be a nice touch.

<comment><USER20> You know what would be better, sending people back. Back to anywhere on the moon at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> And America will go there with the help of a certain South African.

<comment><USER22> The original op-ed actually addresses this. Sounds like the plan is to get SpaceX, Blue Origin, et al. involved.

> To achieve these goals, the National Space Council will look beyond the > halls of government for insight and expertise. In the coming weeks, > President Trump and I will assemble a Users' Advisory Group partly composed > of leaders from America's burgeoning commercial space industry. Business is > leading the way on space technology, and we intend to draw from the > bottomless well of innovation to solve the challenges ahead.

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-will-return-to-the- moon...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/america-will-return-to-the-moonand-go- beyond-1507158341)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> well, easy to state lapalissades now that we have Elon Musk working on it.

(lapalissade is an actual word. Came in handy today! [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapalissade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapalissade))

</comment><comment><USER24> we should just send Trump to the moon and be the president of the whole planet.

<comment><USER21> I was thinking he'd be perfect to be the first on Mars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> No chance if driven by a government entity. None.

<comment><USER26> Are you aware of how we got there the first time?

<comment><USER27> They hired Stanley Kubrick to fake a moon landing but he was such a stickler for detail that he demanded they do it on location.</comment></comment></comment>


Can we save the open web? - <AUTHOR> http://buytaert.net/can-we-save-the-open-web <comment><USER2> Nope. It's impossible to go back in time.</comment>


"Bleisure": Younger Business Travellers Are More Likely to Extend Trips for Fun - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2017/06/all-work-and-some-play?fsrc=rss <comment><AUTHOR> Has anyone had experiences like this? Did your company also provide some discounted pricing or recommendations for activities? It seems like it could be a way to boost employee morale and positive perception of their employer.</comment>


Pre-Beta seed funding sources? - <AUTHOR>

Pre-Beta seed funding sources? Can anyone tell me of any outfits besides Y-Combinator, who provide seedfunding for startups that have everything together but the most important thing, their beta? We have for example: > powerful concept/value proposition and huge potential blueOcean market > great team > clever powerful marketing and viral marketing strategy/tactics > sufficient barriers to entry > interested potential huge strategic consumer partners >patentable inventions Please respond to firstname.lastname@example.com <comment><USER2> Your not going to want to hear this, but there are really no options. Your best bet is to raise from friends and family. Maybe, maybe you could get lucky and raise from a government grand or biz plan contest, but still unlikely. Get something built, get users, then the funding should come (well at least a little easier.)

<comment><USER3> wasn't there something kiva-like for startups? but I second the friends & family suggestion. If all you need is a throwaway prototype / demo it is amazing what you can get done for very little money & a little ingenuity these days</comment></comment>


Why Did CNN Just Buy a Totally Useless App? - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/why-did-cnn-just-buy-a-totally-useless-app-1789426866 <comment><USER2> This is so lost. I am imagining ways how this is even a workable experiment for them. Misguided attempt to reach millennals? 'Social news'? It just boggles the mind. I am sure someone will know more here.

</comment><comment><USER3> Acquire of Casey neistat, the hottest YouTube star at the moment. I hope he got mega paid on the deal because I don't think he can pull CNN out of their nosedive. That goes for all the major media outlets.</comment>


Behind Marissa Mayer's Rise to Power - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/marissa-mayer-biography-2013-8

<comment><AUTHOR> Didn't know too much about Marissa before reading this piece, but it's an amazingly well done investigate story on her childhood, days at Google and how she eventually rose to run Yahoo! Impressive reporting by Business Insider.</comment>


Libreselery: Solving the Donation Distribution Problem in Free Software - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/protontypes/libreselery <comment><USER2> This is a nice idea, and amazing execution on this. Really excited to see how this picks up.

But here are my concerns with the Git contributions to reward performance.

A company I interned at installed a Git history analysis tool, and used stats from that in 1:1s and performance reviews.

About a month after I joined, I had one such 1:1 with my manager. He was like, "Congratulations! You made 53% of all contributions to frontend last month. You're our star performer."

I wasn't. I was responsible for upgrading our frontend from React 15 to React 16. Most of the changes that happened were thanks to the Codemod, and a lot of find / replace magic.

<comment><USER3> A very good point. Solving the problem that you describe is one of the core challenges of LibreSelery. We combine multiple weights calculated based on different project data. Via the GitHub API we can even create weights based on projects activity like merging, code review, issue creation, etc...

By the accumulation of multiple weights, we try to avoid rewarding just one behavior. One of the most important metrics will be how much pull requests X have been solved based on the Y issues. We also have a minimum contribution limit that you can adjust for your project. Generally, all weights can be adjusted for each project. By making all payments transparent, everyone involved can see what the distribution looked like in the past. In principle, every company has metrics for the distribution of funds. Unfortunately, these are often very non-transparent. In contrast, we try to solve the whole thing by combining different transparent movement quantities.

You can find more information about this issue here:

[https://github.com/protontypes/libreselery/issues/132](https://github.com/protontypes/libreselery/issues/132) [https://github.com/protontypes/libreselery/issues/159](https://github.com/protontypes/libreselery/issues/159)</comment></comment>